we keep living anyway
by wrappedinrosegold
Summary: She had held on more tightly to Carl than she had to anything in a long, long time, including her viselike grip on her former lack of a life and her former self. Post 4x9 one-shot featuring Michonne, Rick and Carl. Title from Lin Manuel Miranda's 'Wait For It'.


"Michonne!"

After what had seemed like a lifetime and what sounded like an entire roomful of furniture being pushed across the room, the door had opened and Carl had launched himself into her arms with the giddiness and abandon that only a child could have, the child it was so easy to forget sometimes that he still was.

She had held on more tightly to Carl than she had to anything in a long, long time, including her viselike grip on her former lack of a life and her former self, the one where she had walked with a sword among the protection of the dead, alive, but not living.

Carl responded in kind with a crushing, warm hug, and a murmur into her chest that sounded like "you're okay", that loosened even further that instinctive grip to which she had clung to after the fall of the prison, and as she lifted her head slightly to finally meet the sparkling blue of Rick's crinkled eyes and the uninhibited smile on his bruised, swollen face, Michonne could feel herself let go completely and unreservedly, a sentiment echoed by the firm closing of the door against the harshness of the Georgia sun and the outside world.

"We're glad to see you." Rick's soft spoken words echoed in her ears and in her head in a memory of a time not so long ago of relative respite incongruous with the bleakness of prison walls. "You have…you have no idea how glad we are to see you."

"Glad to see you too." Her voice was low with emotion she had shed over the course of the last few hours, and then raised in pitch slightly as she fully took in the brutal state of Rick's face, courtesy of the Governor. "What's left of you. Anyone ever tell you your face is losing the war?"

"It's not that bad." Even Rick knew he was lying, as he winced as he shifted his weight where he stood next to Carl and Michonne.

She felt more than heard Carl's scoff just before they finally released one another, and she smiled at the expression so like that of the teenager that he was. "It sounds like Carl begs to differ."

"It's that bad," Carl confirmed, fixing Michonne with a conspiratorial look that caused her to raise an eyebrow first towards him, and then in the direction of his father.

Rick shook his head with a resigned chuckle, and the gentle sound was a soothing balm to Michonne's blistered heart and soul. "Can't get away with anything with you two."

The affection slowly building inside of her at the exchange with her boys, and the unexpected term in relation to Carl and Rick nearly caused her to well up again, flooded through her veins in a rush as Rick took the opportunity to wrap his own arms around her, a prolonged, grateful embrace that left her immersed in him, in the way his beard lightly scratched her cheek, in the way he leaned against her as if to seek and share what was left of his strength all at once, and in the unique scent she had come to associate with him: gunpowder, the worn material of his sturdy coat, and the outdoors in which he somehow thrived.

She instinctively inhaled the comforting scent that was Rick in an effort to remind herself that she really had found them, and that they were here, together.

"Come on in." Rick was the one to reluctantly disentangle first, and Michonne could see from the stiffness in his upper body that even the slight contact had pained him. "We have a little food and water. As long as we keep the couch against the door and the knot on the doorknob, we should be…"

Michonne wasn't the only one who sensed the word 'safe' in the offing, and she caught Carl's smile dim into a grieved, far too anguished expression.

For the first time since she had come to their doorway, the silence became deafening, and it occurred to her that it was because there was a distinct absence of sounds that she had unwittingly come to take for granted.

Daryl's rough but familiar voice in a council meeting. Glenn's distinct but discreet pattern of walking that allowed him to make runs so efficiently. Maggie's laugh when she was in the tower on watch with the man she loved. Carol's quiet, concentrated grunts as she took out walkers by the fence. Hershel turning the pages of his well-worn Bible…

…Hershel…

Beth singing songs to Judith that may or may not have been appropriate as a lullaby to soothe Judith's cries…

…Judith's cries, soft sniffles, light breaths, baby giggles…

…Judith…

Michonne couldn't bring herself to ask, not now, but her heart sank as she watched both Rick's and Carl's faces fall, just for a moment, as they remembered, before they determinedly headed to blockade the door and, just for a moment, the memories.

She kept a close eye on both of them as the golden day faded into a silver moonlit night, as Carl focused his energies on finding useful items around the house and as Rick, forced by 'you two' to rest and to conserve the little energy he had.

As much as she was immensely grateful at the unexpected reunion with two of the people who meant so much to her, she ached for them, and for the people in their lives that were not there to share the little bit of home they had found with one another.

It was late, though time had lost meaning somewhere around the outskirts of the overrun prison what felt like a moment and a lifetime ago, when Carl was asleep with his head pillowed in her lap and Rick propped up on the other side of the couch, gun in his hand and a knife at his side, his left hand slightly moving over the knife handle as if tracing it to commit it to memory.

"It's my fault." Rick's hoarse voice shattered the companionable silence and Michonne's still recovering heart. "Everything that happened…"

"No." The word was a whipcrack and reverberated around the room. "It wasn't your fault. You did everything you could…"

"I couldn't save them." He was gripping the knife now, hard enough so that she could see his whitening knuckles even in the dark. "I couldn't save…her…"

Michonne couldn't swallow against the lump in her throat and she was forced to remain silent for an unknown space in time, while her fingers instinctively stroked Carl's hair, willing him to stay asleep, innocent and safe, damn it. "You did everything you could. Everything. It's not your fault. None of it." She stared at Rick until his wet, turbulent eyes were forced to meet her blazing ones. "I know…"

She knew his pain. She knew that the stabbing, searing pain in his very being would never fully heal. She knew that another day would come and he would wake up with the knowledge that it was another morning that he could not take his child into his protective arms.

She knew that all of the words that existed in the universe were not enough, would never be enough, to verbalize her sorrow for his pain or to express her deep understanding of that inconceivable loss that no one truly could comprehend, until they could, and all too well.

So Michonne reached out her hand and stroked the knuckles of Rick's hand until his grip on the knife slackened, and his fingers sought hers with a surprising speed that made her choke back tears, of his need for some sort of contact, and unable to ask for it.

The shared pain seemed to flow through their intertwined fingers, and even though the moment was laden with a melancholy that made her weary to her already aching bones, there was something binding about it, something that made the night and the emotional darkness a bit less oppressive.

She had found them.

Her boys. Her family.

The words and the implications were so loaded and yet they were right.

This, they, Rick and Carl and Michonne…it was right.

Even though so much else wasn't, it was going to be all right.

After all that they had been through, if this family was the bit of grace that would come from their grief, well, she would take it, and them, into her arms yet again, and never let go.


End file.
